SHAMANIC JOURNEY - Nov.1998

In a Vision:
I walk along a green wooded path. Stag Deer comes out of the woods and faces me. I am not afraid. He walks up to me and with the tip of his right antler he opens my chest and leaps into me. He looks out on the scene from inside my chest and walks beside me to my left at the same time. Buffalo walks to my right. They lead me to a clear lake where I drink and bathe myself. I then turn to look at the shore standing knee deep in the water as Moose has taught me to do.

I see the Horned God (masculine deity of Europe) step out of the woods to my right and he approaches White Buffalo Woman (feminine deity of N.America) who has come from the left to stand on the shore. They dance perfectly together. There is no music or sound but the dance itself speaks to me and says: “It was never the Horned One’s intention to rape White Buffalo Woman”. Tears fall down my cheeks as I release guilt I did not know I had, guilt for being white on red people’s land. “The child of this union cannot be born until the white people release their guilt and the red people release their resentment.

I remember calling in the directions with Rainbow Eagle and how I understood in that moment that we have all been calling this in since we began to honor the directions, to see differences. The moment a human knew that south was different from north, the dance began. The desire to blend was born and the walk toward Unity started. Each Native American that faced north and called on that power called Europeans to this continent. Each time any Medicine Person, any Magician, any Witch, any Shaman, Priest or Priestess called to the directions we called each other into the Metis (or mixed blood) Way.

Like children we come together and like children we fight over the toys of ownership, rights, ego . . . there is no people who have not been both perpetrator and victim. We stand as equals in the great expanse of time.

This is a Sacred Time. What we have called to for thousands of years is upon us.

THE HEART OF THE MOTHER LODGE: THE TRIBAL SOUL

The concept of Tribe has become synonymous with simple mindedness and savagery. It is, in truth, the ultimate in civilized behavior.
I am filled with this concept of the Tribal Soul, the part of us that longs for community, knows it’s deep level importance and carries the blueprint for making it work.

Within us we all carry something called The Tribal Soul.
It is the part of us that protects all children because we know that an injury of any kind to any child injures all children ...
- the part of us that respects those of same gender because we see our own beauty, our weakness, our own experience of living in our sister’s or brother’s eyes, the part that knows that betrayal of our same sex is a betrayal of self in a very real way and impacts those of opposite gender as well...
- the part of us that respects those of opposite gender as great mysterious beings on a road we will never travel in this lifetime...
- the part of us that respects our elders because we know that the real heroes are those who have lived a full and good life without hesitation, who have learned patience, acceptance and how to live in inner stillness, who have learned to lose and win with grace, who have learned to guide without manipulation or force and whether or not our old ones have mastered these arts, we respect them for a lifetime of trying, we respect them because we are trying and know the challenge...
- the part of us that celebrates both the triumphs and mistakes made by ourselves and others with equal hilarity and equal attention because we honor the process of living and know ourselves as one people, one entity within which each and every action impacts the whole...

The great ache that we feel, that we hear in love songs and see in films is not for one other perfect mate but for the Tribal Soul. The disappointment that we find, as marriage settles in to living and the age of 40something rolls upon us, is not just in ourselves, our jobs or our compromised vision but also for the lack of Tribal Soul. There is no one Being, job or static opinion that can fill that place.

Many say knowledge is the enemy. Knowledge is not the enemy - ignorance is. It is the intellectualization of experience that makes us weak and unable to connect to the Tribal Self.

When the seasons reign and people live, dream, make love, birth, grow and die in each other’s presence, when each day we see each other and face ourselves in the eyes of our tribe the connecting web is strong and sensitive. It enables the people to respond to crisis, to revel in celebration, to mourn when needed . . . . to turn together like a flock of birds.



When any event happens the people must gather to hear the stories. Each must see it through the eyes of the children, the old, the mothers, the warriors, the teachers, the healers and the artists.

We must make time to hear the stories.

The Mother Lodge awakens the Tribal Soul. I remember . . .

INTUITION→IMPACT→UNDERSTANDING

In order to learn to trust our Intuition we must seize a moment when Knowing is present and have the courage to act on it. Only then can we see the Impact of pure Intuition in movement, the Impact of our Knowing brought to life.

The less intellectual knowledge we have about the situation or choice and the more we are working on pure instinct and introspective intuition the more Impactful the experience will be; on our level of self Trust, our Trust in Spirit and on our environment.

Each time you act on Trust alone and learn from it you also polish your character and your ability to hold your own in the face of the energies dancing around you. You become like a smooth stone that when dropped in this small pond we call “the world” causes ripples of energy to emanate out and wash over all things including other human Beings.

This act of listening is called Courage.
The taking of action based on what is heard is called Bravery.
Responding to the Impact of whatever consequence arises from this action is called response-ability.

You have taken the Sacred Opportunity to bathe the world in your Sacred Self. It is a gift and the beginning of truly Understanding who you are and what you are worth to the Universe.

AS SMART AS ROCKS

When I was a child in a small town on the shore of Lake Michigan I would watch the Lebanese families, the Italian families, the African/American families, the German families and the few others who still seemed to have a sense of their lineage and their cultural identity. Always they fascinated me and always I felt an odd unidentifiable ache in my heart. As I grew, the ache became a part of my very soul. It claimed such a presence in my being that it became like an organ; like a touchy gallbladder or a trick knee that lay dormant until confronted by a food or circumstance that caused a “flair up” and these ”flair ups” were caused by anyone or anything that implied that sense of lineage or cultural identity.

There was a small community of Lebanese in our town and there were several old ladies who always dressed completely in black and many of them did not speak English. Still, I would walk as close behind them as I could and listen. I was sure they had some kind of secret knowledge that I was not privy to. I wanted, so deeply, to belong.

My family heritage was mixed and mysterious. My Mother was adopted and knew only her mother’s name, her father a complete mystery. My paternal Grandparents were dead long before I was born. I knew I was of their family and that they loved me but that did not feed my desire for heritage. We were Scottish, Irish, French, Welsh, Native American..... So much had been added into the mix that we were neither soup, stew nor goulash. We were everything and nothing.

I was an American child who’s culture had been stripped away and replaced by television, Barbi dolls, processed food, the scientific method and a strange hybrid religion that was part Judaism, part European tribal culture, part the teachings of a brilliant man called Jesus and part political machine mixed with bits and pieces of other Sacred Pathways. This elaborate conglomeration of rituals and beliefs had by now been dubbed Christianity. And much of the world believed then and believes now that it had sprung, fully formed, from the lips of a few men two thousand years ago – a “new” religion that could save us all. I know true Christian Seekers now but as a child all I saw was a big building and the words meant nothing to me.

When I was very small I much preferred my own company and found a vacant lot at the end of our sheltered street that became my world for many years. I was close to the Earth there. I built shelters in summer and winter and made tools from whatever I found. I felt at home on the Earth; it was her people that confused me and left me feeling somehow homeless though I slept in a perfectly good bed every night, even if it was usually sandy.

For me, it has always been the Earth that consistantly and constantly carries truth, lineage, history and a true sense of belonging. If we look at our evolution through her eyes we gain a very different sense of history.

Be brave. Be brave enough to Enter the Mother Lodge and sit in her lap or enter the stillness of deep Meditation and Become A Rock. Just for a few moments you are not an Amerindian or a Celt, or a Jew or a Muslim or a Christian or a Buddhist . . . just a rock.

If you can become a rock and watch all of history simply go by you will begin the process of becoming a true Human Being and leaving behind the pain of whatever particular pack of lies you were surrounded by as you grew.

Understand ! I do not call your teachers, your parents, your preachers or your culture liars. Most of them told you the truth as best they knew it. Most of them told you exactly what they believed you needed to know in order to be happy, whole and functional. But they were not as smart as rocks. How could they be? They have been here on the Earth for such a short time . . . and seen so little.

UNTITLED

So you want to be a witch*
a bruja*
a medicine woman*
a wise woman
a healer . . . . .

Sit down outdoors with your spine straight and your shoulders back.
Open your chest and clear your throat.
Speak from the simple silent soul place deep in your belly.
Speak to the earth
to the sky
to the wild ones and
to the world.
Speak to the ancestors and say :
Make me a witch
a bruja
a medicine woman
a wise woman
a healer . . . . .

Pull out one hair from your head,
one small symbolic bit of self
lay it on the ground and say Good Bye.
Don’t look back.

Ride the wildest roller coasters
sled down hills that are a little to steep
a little to fast
a little to icy.
Learn to breath when you’re frightened,
sing when you’re tired,
laugh through tears and
comfort a loved one when there are no answers.
Learn to laugh loud and change gears on a steep hill without rolling back.

Get a good car and sensible shoes.
Grow your hair long, brush it often and
bathe in honey, flower petals and sweet oil.

These are essential skills because
Spirit will strip you of pride
so that you may know power.
Spirit will strip you of pity
so that you may reach into any hole,
no matter how deep,
and help another to begin climbing.

Spirit will lead you,
eyes open and hair flying
head long into the stone wall
of your own foolishness and
knock loose the broken shards
of your old self
so that they rattle around in your skull
go liquid and settle in the base of your brain
to drip down through your body
flow out your feet
and fertilize flowers on the footpath.

Spirit will drop you into the lap of trouble
with only one tool in your pocket
And your wisdom will be judged by how long you search
everywhere but there
for just the right cure.

Spirit will furnish you with a sticky page photo album
complete with perfect pictures of every scabby knee,
every broken heart,
every callous word,
every wasted moment,
and it will fly through the pages and flash by your face like an old silent movie
whenever you are about to screw up through arrogance.
Bind it in your favorite color.
Place it with your Holy Books.

Learn to think while you are falling
and believe in Magick* strong enough
to turn the rock surface hurtling toward you to cool water.
Close your eyes,
point your toes,
raise your arms,
straighten your spine,
hit the water clean as an arrow shot
and remember that sometimes the only difference
between falling and flying is the way you land.

So, you want to be a witch
a bruja
a medicine woman
a wise woman
a healer . . . . .

Learn to recognize the enemy,
sleep sitting up,
face everything,
walk away from anything,
pee in the woods,
efficiantly pack a suitcase and
sing a Sacred Self song

Learn to be helpless and helpful
fulfilled and a walking void
a midwife and a funeral director

and then,
you may begin . . . . .

THE POETRY ON THIS PAGE

As you meander around this blog, here is a space to post comments on any of the poetry that runs down the opposite side of the page. Please be sure to note which poem you are commenting on. Thank You

THE BRIDGE

GrandMother Evelyn [Eaton] said that “No one cares for a bridge other than to cross it” and sometimes I feel the bridge that I am . It makes me remember a time when I was about 13.

My family went to Mackinaw Island by houseboat and one night I snuck out with 2 older boys. They took me up the hill to Fort Mackinaw and showed me how to climb up onto the roof. From there we could see out over all the buildings and the harbor across the straights. The Mackinaw Bridge was a string of lights connecting the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan with the lights of Mackinaw City on one side and St. Ignace on the other. I remember it now as looking like a diamond clasp that held the earthen robe of GrandMother Earth closed at her watery throat.

The bright lights at either end made the center seem the blackest dark and from that vantage point I could see why a person could live at one end of a bridge and never know what lay on the other side. If you are warm, fed and well lit why walk into that darkness on only a promise or some deep inner illogical prompting ?

I remember that night as I stand in the dark on the center of this "bridge" brought about by The Mother Lodge Journey. Occasionally I sense others around me and sometimes we even brush against each other feeling the momentary rush of familiar human contact.

Out here in the center of dark nothingness it does not matter if the soul we see in the night is pretty or slim or white or black or red or educated or rich or even speaks our language. The touch carries reverence for the willingness to risk insanity - not knowing sanity from insanity - to walk the bridge.

Out here on the dark center of this bridge I look out across time and water. Now and then, for just a moment, I can lock into the eyes of a small 13 year old girl on the roof of Fort Mackinaw. She saw the whole view, She knows where I am and for some crazy reason, I trust her.

LETTING THE SHAMANS DIE

When you were born, inside sterile hospital doors, who read the medicine signs ?

Perhaps a crow would have come to the window that morning and cawed 3 times to announce new life and the whole forest would have known you arrived. Perhaps, on the day you were born, a deer would have crossed the meadow to let your Mother know that this child wanted gentleness or a badger took root nearby to say “Teach this one to be strong and to look for meanings beneath the surface, she will need it in her life’s work”.

When I was Midwifing I felt there was “something” there in the placentas. Each one so different that I would stare at them much longer than was needed to be certain they were intact. If I had known about scrying* then, I think I would have laid them out smoothly in a belly sized bowl and dreamed myself inside each one to see if there were any important messages for the Child or the Mother who had both just been born new or anew.

The old arts, like scrying or the reading of Medicine Signs are being replaced by the ‘scientific method’. They are dying. And if people do not know what a Shaman is –they cannot recognize one. If people do not know what a Shaman is – they find it easy to call themselves one.

There are very few who have faced the deep seeded demons of self importance, self pity and life wounds and emerged truly gifted and humbled by it. Very few have died the Shaman's Death and lived to tell about it. Very few who are willing to walk their Wisdom in the world without title or expectations of fame or wealth. And because of this humility those who truly are Way Showers are often missed. They are quickly passed by because they are not on TV, leaders of a cult or card carrying members of The Shaman’s Union with a framed certificate on the wall from the FDA.

And so they often live in poverty and relative obscurity.

For many years I have asked myself what a Shaman is. What is a Medicine Woman?

And after all the asking I think I understand that, when you are healed, when you are whole, when you are fearlessly free to Love, when you make a healing difference that lasts in the lives you touch,
when you no longer care what you are,
when you stop asking,
you simply Become what you Do.